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HOT WIRE NOW AVAILABLE

"Hot Wire is a hip, funny, serious and suspenseful novel that brings the great tradition of grifter noir into the present day with the excitement and urgency of the activity its title refers to. Emma Martin is the coolest protagonist crime fiction has produced in a long time."

Notes: The god Serapis is a classic example of the use of religion to reinforce political and cultural unification following a foreign conquest and occupation. According to Tour Egypt, "Serapis (Sarapis, Zaparrus) was an invented god. He was a composite of several Egyptian and Hellenistic deities who was introduced to the world at the beginning of the Ptolemaic (Greek) Period in Egypt during the reign of Ptolemy I, though his legacy lasted well into the Roman period. Thus, he was meant to form a bridge between the Greek and Egyptian religion in a new age in which their respective gods were bought face to face with each other, so that both Egyptians and Greeks could find union in a specific supreme entity."

Serapis existed in Egypt before the Ptolemies took over the kingdom following the death of Alexander the Great. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised), "Sarapis ... was the hypostasis of Osiris and of Apis-bulls entombed at Saqqara." Just as the Ptolemies made themselves pharoahs after the takeover, the Greeks took over the existing cult of Sarapis "to provide themselves with a divine Graeco-Egyptian patron." (OCD) By doing so, they were following Alexander's own model of fusing cultures in order to enhance his own political control over his subject populations.

July 30, 2015

"Analysing the origins of jade used in ancient jewellery has revealed a trading arena that was active for more than 3,000 years and sprawled over 3,000km in Southeast Asia – possibly the largest such network discovered in the region to date." Source: Science Daily (2008)

Notes: Video from 2013. According to the Huffington Post (2013), "[a]rchaeologists working at a sacred temple in Nepal long identified as the birthplace of Buddha have uncovered and dated a timber structure that may help confirm the chronology of the religious icon's life. The structure dates to the sixth century B.C., suggesting a birth date for Buddha several hundred years earlier than some had previously speculated..."

Technically, this discovery only shows that Buddhism was in existence before the temple was built in the sixth century BC. I'm not sure that it does that much to resolve the issue of when the Buddha was born since some scholars have already suggested dates earlier than that.

"There is no agreement on when Siddhartha was born," according to the Ancient History Encyclopedia. "This is still a question mark both in scholarship and Buddhist tradition. Several dates have been proposed, but the many contradictions and inaccuracies in the different chronologies and dating systems make it impossible to come up with a satisfactory answer free of controversy."

The dates suggested range from "624-544 BCE" to as early as "490/450-410/370 BCE," so at best this find would only tend to eliminate the later dates.

July 28, 2015

"For decades archaeologists have been searching for the origins of agriculture. Their findings indicated that early plant domestication took place in the western and northern Fertile Crescent. In a new study, researchers demonstrate that the foothills of the Zagros Mountains of Iran in the eastern Fertile Crescent also served as a key center for early domestication." Source: Science Daily (2013)

"Human domestication of soybeans is thought to have first occurred in central China some 3,000 years ago, but archaeologists now suggest that cultures in even earlier times and in other locations adopted the legume." Source: Science Daily (2011)

"Until now, researchers believed farming was 'invented' some 12,000 years ago in an area that was home to some of the earliest known human civilizations. A new discovery offers the first evidence that trial plant cultivation began far earlier -- some 23,000 years ago." Source: Science Daily.

"Northern Europeans in the Neolithic period initially rejected the practice of farming, which was otherwise spreading throughout the continent, a team of researchers has found. Their findings offer a new wrinkle in the history of a major economic revolution that moved civilizations away from foraging and hunting as a means for survival." Source: Science Daily.

July 27, 2015

According to the New York Times, a German scholar studying a private collection of manuscripts in Baltimore recently discovered "a hidden translation of an ancient, influential medical text by Galen of Pergamon, a Greco-Roman physician and philosopher who died in 200 AD."

"Scholars are just beginning to pore over the text, the oldest known copy of Galen’s 'On the Mixtures and Powers of Simple Drugs.' It may well provide new insights into medicine’s roots and into the spread of this new science across the ancient world."